Summary of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Essay Example for Free

Summary of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Essay Stephen Covey’s book â€Å"The 7 habits of highly effective people† will help me in a number of different ways in the year to come. Not only with being effective in my career, but also my personal life and graduate school. Covey talks about character and personality traits, and uses a great example of being in Chicago and having excellent map and reference skills, but if you have a map of Detroit you will not be able to find your way around no matter how good your secondary skills are. This is a great example of how it is necessary to possess the primary elements, before your secondary skills can be used effectively. Covey goes on to talk about the 7 habits of highly effective people in his book, and continues to talk about the difference in relying on personality vs. character ethics. Covey feels that if you rely on personality ethics and the underlying paradigms are the same, simply changing outward behavior is not effective. He also talks about how people view things not the way they are, but how they are conditioned to see thing. He uses an example of two groups of people being shown two different pictures of a young and old woman. Then the groups are shown an abstract containing characteristics of both the old and young woman. Each group saw the image of the picture they were shown within the abstract. The book presents the 7 habits in an inside-out approach centering around principles and character. The key points that I got out of reading this book was to approach the way that I look at the world differently. Once I can realize my past conditioning, I can then change the way that I see things in order to be more effective. All 7 habits will be helpful to me in my future growth, success, and effectiveness. The first is to be proactive. By being proactive, this means to assess a situation and developing a positive response for it, as opposed to reporting it to someone and sitting back and waiting for them to come up with a response. The other key points I took from the 7 habits of highly effective people, is to develop a personal mission statement and to spend time doing what fits into my personal mission. By this I need to identify the key roles I take on in life, and make time for each of these key roles. Another key point is to look for win/win agreements and relationships. This means to look for relationships and agreements that are beneficial to both parties, and in the event that there is not the possibility for a win/win to be comfortable to say â€Å"no deal†. The last three habits I found extremely beneficial to me. What I got from these is to first look to understand the other person, and then seek to be understood. Secondly try and solve conflict and find a better solution to a problem through mutual trust and understanding. Finally, to try and maintain a balance between production and production capacity, by looking at the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. The 7 habits of highly effective people, has been beneficial to me in a number of different ways. It has helped me look at how I perceive things, versus the way that I need to be approaching things. It has also helped me develop a mission statement for myself and to prioritize things based on that personal statement. It has also helped me look at my production and production capacity, and helped me try and understand people before seeking to be understood. I would have to give this book a 9 out of 10.